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About shruza

To me, food is an art form -- chefs are the artists, restaurants are the galleries, and my tastebuds are my "eyes". I constantly seek out flavor combinations that I've never tasted, plating I've never seen, ingredients I've never experienced. Food as art. Food as science. Food as education. Food as entertainment. Food as pleasure. As Julia Child once said, "People who love to eat are always the best people". From my experience, it's true! I am excited to go on this journey of experiment and fun in the kitchen and share my outings to Chicago restaurants and the underground dining scene!
Ciao Chow!

A new year brings new aspirations. For us, it meant trying to cook at home more often as well as cook for friends. After eating at Joe Beef in Montreal a year and a half ago, we fell in love. When our farmer brought us a beautiful rabbit, our first instinct was to dig through the recipes from The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts. As soon as we found the recipe for the decadent Lievre a la Royale we knew we had to make it — and we needed to bring friends! Things escalated quickly from there…

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I’m giggly excited about the Chicago Reader write up about the Supper Club that my husband are I are involved in. Our group met a year ago on a mushroom foraging trip lead by Iliana Regan of Elizabeth restaurant. We’re a bunch of people who love cooking, eating good food, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Since the beginning, the supper club themes varied (Ancient Roman, Viking, Victorian, Mesopotamia, Iron Chef: Sardine, etc.) and the food increasingly continues to improve due to newly learned techniques.

Additional pictures along with menus to the various themes are on our official Sup Club website.

Always on the mission for flavor combinations that I’ve never tasted, plating I’ve never seen, and ingredients I’ve never experienced, I typically don’t seek out simple food unless it’s a perfect baguette, good butter, or something of the like. However, I’m beginning to understand that I totally missed the point of what simple can be.

I met Chef Justin Behlke of Thurk through my friend, Melissa. They met on LTH forum where she offered to host one of his Underground meals at her place. He previously staged at Noma and wanted to bring simple, focused food to Chicago without all the drama of kitchen hierarchy. And so Thurk was born. After speaking to Justin, his passion and drive captured me.

Below are images from my most recent dinner a few weeks ago. Still amazed how complex everything tasted, yet how simple the ingredients were. Flakes of Alaskan maldon salt popping through the soft texture of freshly made cheese make my tastebuds squeal. Light pops of vinegar carrots cutting through the pan-fried pig face and warm pork broth caused me to close my eyes and wish the moment would never end. These pops of surprise tell me that simple can be complex with the right chef behind the plate

And let’s be honest — this is as close to Noma I am going to get for a while.

I recently learned of another fun trick with eggs! At a recent Thurk dinner, Chef Justin Behlke strolled past each diner shaving what he referred to as cured egg yolk while he explained the dish. This definitely piqued my interest and I cached it away as something that would require further research!

The proof of concept seemed easy enough so I grabbed the last egg in the fridge and buried it in the curing mixture to see what would happen. I decided to start with a basic 50/50 mix of sugar and salt and added a bit of Herbs de Provence to see if it would pick up much flavor. The “biggest” challenge is making sure the yolk doesn’t break!

After a 1 day cure and a two-week aging, the flavor seemed comparable to parmesan cheese, adding a salty richness. My first pairing was with bone marrow, daikon, and leek which didn’t look quite as pretty as I envisioned, but it added an extra depth of flavor to the already rich marrow.

I’m curious now how different aging times will impact the flavor. Hmmmm, I think I have a fresh dozen in the refrigerator… stay tuned…

Place whole raw egg yolk into a 50/50 mixture of salt and sugar. I added herbs de provence for extra flavor.

Cure the egg yolk for 24 hours in this mixture

Remove salt from cured egg yolk, place in cheesecloth and hang in the back of your fridge for 1 week.

Use a microplane to shave the cured egg yolk onto your dish

One egg yolk produces a lot of shavings!

We shaved ours onto bone marrow with roasted daikon and leeks. Not the prettiest, but delicious!

I started exploring Underground dinners a year ago and haven’t looked back. Creative and exciting food, fascinating dinner participants, and the warm welcoming into these chef’s homes really make it a unique experience every time.

My favorite Underground, One Sister, became Elizabeth restaurant so I sought out to get my fix elsewhere. I recently ate at Thurk Underground (post coming soon) and last night dined at Sous Rising Guesterant with Chef Jake Bickelhaupt (veteran of Alinea, Schwa, and Charlie Trotter’s). He and his wife, Alexa, host the dinners in their place in Uptown. An open kitchen leading into the dining area allowed us to see Jake plate as well as converse with him and give feedback throughout the night. Alexa did an amazing job making us feel right at home, pouring our wine and helping serve.

We booked out the entire table of 8 with our Supper Club so we didn’t have the pleasure of meeting anyone new, but Jake and Alexa genuinely seemed excited to have us. Jake’s take on American cuisine combined molecular techniques — where needed — for surprise. The flavors were inventive and bright. Execution was perfect and the presentation — stunning. I’m looking forward to seeing Jake obtain his goal of opening a small BYO restaurant and dining with him again!

Just discovered a very useful kitchen tool that lends a helping hand in the kitchen: a thin slip-on rubber pour spout that fits on bowls, pans, etc. Used it today and successfully made pouring beet juice a non-mess issue when it could have been. 🙂

Slip-On Silicone Pour Spout for Mixing Bowls, Pots, Pans & Jars

Happy New Year!

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A bit about me…

I consider food an art form -- chefs are the artists, restaurants are the galleries, and my tastebuds are my "eyes". I constantly seek out flavor combinations that I've never tasted, plating I've never seen, ingredients I've never experienced. Food as art. Food as science. Food as education. Food as entertainment. Food as pleasure. As Julia Child once said, "People who love to eat are always the best people". From my experience, it's true! I am excited to go on this journey of experiment and fun in the kitchen and share my outings to Chicago restaurants and the underground dining scene! Ciao Chow!

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